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Should you show customers your stock levels?

Hi everyone, I run a small Internet company and we are trying to grow our sales numbers. I like how Amazon.com product pages say things like "only 2 left in stock - order soon" and I was wondering if I should take the time to implement something like this on our site. Can showing current stock levels to potential customers increase your sales? Do companies do this legitimately or are they purposely creating low stock levels to create a sense of scarcity? Any thoughts on using stock level indicators as a sales/marketing tool would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Heather

searchoptmedia | Performer |
12/5/2011 - 8:37 pm

The simple answer with that is yes. As for me, if I am the customer I would wabt to know if products, services or units are still available. It is very essential if business owners will provide that information to its customers.

jburns | Window Shopper |
12/5/2011 - 2:00 pm

I&#39;m a fan of showing stock numbers when they get low and simply saying &quot;in stock&quot; when there are plenty of items available. This is something I wish our site did currently and am working on getting the feature up and running. Nothing is more frusterating as a customer then doing all the research to buy and then finding out at the last minute that an item is out of stock!

Frankrizal | Performer |
12/4/2011 - 8:27 pm

I think customers love to see the no. of available products cause on buying, like for example a condo, they would want to know if there are available slots. So, it would be better if The available stocks are shown to customers.

bizcard | Performer |
11/29/2011 - 2:30 pm

You could simply show &quot;In Stock&quot;, and ensure this is updated in real time if you have lots of visitors on your site. The reason is if you only have one item left and it is showing for two visitors, once someone adds it to their cart, it should automatically show unvailable for the nest visitor. If you have only a few visitors per day, then you should not worry about the instant update.

airglecorp | Window Shopper |
11/24/2011 - 3:40 pm

Finbarr | Performer |
11/23/2011 - 7:02 am

Hi Heather
I think the primary purpose of showing the stock levels to your customers / website visitors is to be transparent and ensure that they have realistic expectations if they order from you. I think it could be a dangerous game to play to try and manipulate this to try and create a false sense of scarcity. On the web there is usually an abundance of choice so it makes more sense to be honest with your customers, they will appreciate you more in the long run.
Most good shopping carts have a stock level feature built right in, so you shouldnt need to spend too much implementing this feature.
Best of luck
Finbarr